


sometimes a mystery

by mapped



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 01 Season 02: Fantasy High Sophomore Year (Dimension 20), Canon Non-Binary Character, F/F, Families of Choice, Gen, Gender Identity, Platonic Relationships, Questioning, Reincarnation, Relationship Advice, mostly ayda & garthy backstory, with a side of figayda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23099140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Ayda questions her gender and falls in love, and throughout all of it Garthy is there for her.
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort & Garthy O'Brien, Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth
Comments: 22
Kudos: 140





	sometimes a mystery

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [an imperfect image](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23033656) by [rainny_days](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainny_days/pseuds/rainny_days). 



> I really loved rainny_days' imagination of Ayda knowing Garthy from her previous life, so I included the same kind of concept in this fic. Do go check out her fic above if you haven't yet!
> 
> Title from Janelle Monáe - 'I Like That'.

The light that comes off Fig is so bright that it hurts Ayda’s eyes to look at her sometimes. This is strange, because Ayda’s the one who’s half-phoenix, whose wingtips and hair and eyes are wreathed in flame, and though Fig has the blood of the Nine Hells in her, she doesn’t physically glow with fire the way Ayda does. Yet there is an intense light about Fig, as loud as everything else that she says and does, and Ayda’s not sure how other people don’t go blind looking at her.

Alone in the library, Ayda sits and thinks about this. She reads books. She reads back through her own notes. She studies the stars and wishes not for the first time that life was as easily navigable as the sea.

She hates things that are loud. But Fig is different. In the library—which is, admittedly, not wholly silent, patronized as it is by rowdy pirates, but still it is an oasis of calm upon the deck of the Leviathan—she finds she misses Fig’s noise.

She doesn’t know what to do about that. She has no record of anything like this happening in her previous lives. Fig is unique, a beautiful anomaly.

In the end, she does what she always does when she’s stuck. She goes to Garthy.

* * *

When she was little she spent most of her time in the Gold Gardens, in the private wing of it where Garthy lives. She had her own room there overlooking a small quiet cloister, and in the centre of it was a fountain which flowed with what looked like shimmering liquid gold. Garthy helped her move a small portion of the Compass Points into her bedroom as soon as she was old enough to read. She didn’t like to venture into the rest of the Gold Gardens where the customers laughed and shouted over each other to be heard, and the air wavered with smoke and perfume.

Gender back then seemed to her as hazy as that—smoke and perfume, impossible to grasp. She assumed for a long time that she didn’t have a gender, because Garthy doesn’t have one. She couldn’t figure out where other people got their genders from. It wasn’t something you learnt from a book like a spell, or something you could buy with gold. Other people looked at her and saw a girl, but she couldn’t understand what it was that made her one.

“People think I’m a girl, don’t they?” she asked Garthy, once.

“Yes, darling,” Garthy answered, sitting at their vanity, oiling their hair, “but it’s up to you to decide whether you are a girl or not. You don’t have to be.”

“I don’t understand how people tell if I’m a girl.” She was perched on Garthy’s windowsill, still tiny enough that she didn’t touch the ceiling when she did that. “People think you’re a boy, sometimes.”

“They’re wrong,” Garthy said. Ayda was mesmerized by the motions of their hands, working through the fall of their hair. “Other people can’t decide your gender for you. Most people assume that looking a certain way means you’re a boy or a girl, but it’s not about how you look. It’s about how you feel.”

“How are you supposed to feel?”

Garthy shrugged. “I just know I don’t feel like either.”

“I don’t understand,” she repeated. “How does someone feel like a girl?”

“Darling, I have no idea,” Garthy said, their voice soft like it was coated in moonlight. “I’d be a different person if I knew.”

“But you must know what it’s like to feel like a girl, if you know you _don’t_ feel like one,” she said, her voice rising. It was too confusing for her.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Garthy said, smiling gently at her. “You’ll figure it out. It’s like a riddle, see. You love riddles. Some of them just take longer to solve, and that’s all right.”

She did love riddles, and so she allowed herself to be satisfied with that, for the moment.

* * *

She’s seventeen, now, and she still hasn’t solved that particular riddle. She feels more _librarian_ and _wizard_ than _girl_ , but is that enough to make her not a girl? None of the notes from her former lives hold any hints; her gender wasn’t a thing her past selves had grappled with, it seems, and she wants to trust them to know better than her, these versions of her who had lived full adult lives, and who had had so many years to ponder the subject. 

She told Garthy that, a year or two ago. “I’ve always been a girl. Why would I be any different in this life?”

“In this life you’re growing up knowing that it’s normal to question your gender and be non-binary or trans,” Garthy said. “You didn’t have that before. Some people know what gender they are before they even have the words for it. I’m not one of those people. I didn’t know until I met others like me. And you know, for some people, their gender doesn’t stay the same their whole life. Why should yours stay the same for all your many lives?”

She’d met Garthy when she’d been fifty-something and they’d been in their late teens, new to pirate life, new to the Leviathan. They’d run away from home and didn’t want to talk about their parents. She’d thought about how she’d never met her own father, how he’d never bothered to try and find her. Garthy wanted to save money to build a sanctuary on the Leviathan where anyone weary and wandering could feel safe and welcome and healed, which Ayda thought a noble goal.

They also wanted to save money for surgery. They would come back again and again to borrow books and chat with Ayda, update her on their piratical exploits, even though nobody _ever_ wanted to interact with her more than necessary. Ayda had never imagined she could learn so much outside of dusty, voluminous tomes. The years passed; she noticed Garthy’s pockets getting heavier, their outfits getting fancier, and then one day, they invited her to the grand opening of the Gold Gardens. She hates parties, but she’d braved that one, for Garthy.

All this was meticulously documented in her notes. Garthy was the closest friend she’d ever made in any life, it looked like, and she didn’t want herself to forget any of it.

She’d written about the day Garthy got top surgery. How they’d cried, and she’d cried with them. It was the first time she’d shared in someone else’s happiness so intimately. She was there when they’d woken up and looked down at their newly flat chest. She’d recorded the memory in such vivid detail, she felt like she could actually remember it across lifetimes. The tears blazing down her cheeks and Garthy saying, dryly but fondly, “Please, darling, don’t burn my beautiful new chest with all your crying, you’ll ruin it.”

She wonders what day in this present life of hers might compare to the luminous bloom of that day.

* * *

When she was living in the Gold Gardens, there weren’t any other kids around. She liked her solitude, but sometimes she hated it too, especially when Garthy was away on their occasional trips to the mainland. They were always reluctant to leave the Gold Gardens, to leave her, but the business they had was important. One time, when they were gone, she found a group of other kids to play with; they climbed the rigging and pretended they were out there sailing the seas and hunting ships like the fearsome pirates their parents supposedly were. But their gleeful chaos was difficult for her to follow, and she ended up being too weird for them, anyway. She went back to her room and stared at the wall and thought about this one girl among them with fiery red hair and freckles and a gap-toothed smile, whose shriek was the most terrifying of the group.

She stared at the wall and didn’t cry.

Maybe it was better to be alone, she thought, than to have everyone standing coldly around you, telling you that you’re too weird to be a part of their group, even if you do have cool wings and can fly. 

“Did you ever feel like everybody thinks you’re wrong just for existing?” she asked Garthy when they returned from the mainland.

“All the time,” they said. “What happened, darling?”

She shook her head and refused to elaborate.

Garthy sat down on her bed with her and said, “Well, whatever happened, you should know there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, love. Your brain works differently, that’s all. It’s not wrong. When I was younger I never thought I would find people who would accept me and love me for who I am, yeah? But I found those people. It took me a while, but I found them. And you already have me.”

She nodded, choking back tears.

“I built this place specifically for peace. Pirates can be a violent, nasty bunch. But here they have to put down their pistols and cutlasses and be good to themselves and to each other. I wanted you to have a childhood where you felt well cared for. I hope I haven’t failed you.” 

“I want friends my age, for once,” she said. “Is that an ungrateful thing for me to say? Because I’m not ungrateful. I’m very grateful to you. But I’m also very lonely.”

“No, darling, that’s all right, you can tell me anything, yeah?” They touched Ayda’s shoulder, briefly. “I’m so sorry. I’m afraid that although I can provide many things here at the Gold Gardens, the companionship of fellow children is sadly not one of them.”

That was okay. It was better to be alone, she thought.

* * *

As soon as she arrives at the Gold Gardens, one of the attendants recognizes her and shows her to a booth in a secluded corner, where the noise of the crowd is dampened. Garthy comes along in a minute, bringing her a mug of steaming hot chocolate, her favourite, with a dollop of whipped cream on top.

“Ayda! How delightful to see you here. How have you been?”

“Restless,” she replies. “Extremely so. Do you remember the people you sent to see me in Compass Points, for the Sending spell?”

“Yeah, they’re a rather memorable bunch,” Garthy says. “Hard to forget. What about them?”

“More precisely, do you remember Miss Figueroth Faeth?”

“Sure I do.”

She takes a bite of whipped cream and licks her lips clean. “We have become best friends, because she is best friends with Adaine and I am also best friends with Adaine now. Adaine is wonderful, she is a brilliant wizard and she and I can teach each other so much about divination magic and she is very kind to me. But I feel different when it comes to Fig. I think about her constantly. I think about her when I wake up and I think about her before I go to sleep. Is that normal?”

Garthy blinks. “It sounds like you have a crush on her.”

Ayda thinks about Fig lying next to her in the van. They talked until late and Ayda’s eyes were drooping and she still didn’t want to close them because Fig hadn’t closed her eyes yet, and she was determined to do as Fig did. She wanted to hold onto the sight of Fig’s sweet, tired smile for as long as possible. And Fig was so close, smelling like cloves and warm, spicy magic.

“What can I do about that?” she asks Garthy.

“Would you like to tell her?” Garthy says. “Fig seems like someone who has her heart in the right place. Are you worried she will hurt you?”

“No, I don’t think she will hurt me deliberately. However, it’s possible she will hurt me without meaning to. And I don’t want that.” She takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “But I do want to tell her. How do people normally tell their crushes?”

“You have to do it your way. If she likes you, she’ll respond positively to you being yourself.”

“What if she doesn’t respond positively?”

“Then I’ll be here for you, with a never-ending supply of hot chocolate.” Garthy clinked their cup of tea against Ayda’s mug. “You’ve seen me through my fair share of heartbreak, darling. You know we can get through anything together.”

* * *

Garthy told casual stories about their various partners to Ayda as she was growing up. Stories that were sweet, and funny, and sometimes a little sad. Ayda didn’t always get to meet the individuals who featured in these stories, but when Garthy was more serious about someone, they would introduce the person to Ayda. There was a half-orc woman, and a water genasi who went by all pronouns, and a triton man who disappeared back into the depths of the ocean far too soon. Ayda hates the triton man; she’d never seen Garthy mope for so long.

The half-orc woman and the water genasi still swing by the Gold Gardens sometimes, though, and Garthy is always happy to see them, so Ayda likes them both well enough.

But the one Ayda liked best was Jawbone the werewolf. He hasn’t been around in several years, but Ayda remembers him, the wild stories he would tell. Garthy still laughs over those stories. Ayda liked how Jawbone was so proud of who he was. Proud and unapologetic, even though the world saw him as something bad and evil. He was always nice to her, and made sure she was comfortable in all their interactions. Garthy said he was thoughtful and observant and wise, thanks to his rich life experiences, and Ayda had never thought anyone could be wiser than Garthy, but it was true. Jawbone was incredibly wise. But he was also in trouble a lot of the time. On the run; low on funds; trying to sober up.

Garthy told Jawbone he would always have a home in the Gold Gardens. Ayda saw them kissing once, holding each other close, and it made her wings spark and crackle in sympathy. She’d known she was gay—that’s in the notes—but she didn’t think she’d known until that moment how much it mattered to her, what it truly meant; and what a relief it was to see proof that this was normal, and good, and _fantastic_.

It was like learning a difficult new spell and attempting it for the first time and finding that it works perfectly, just as it’s supposed to.

* * *

She kisses Fig, and later when she’s telling Garthy about it back at the Gold Gardens, she feels the euphoria of it all over again, like she might soar into the sky and burst into a smattering of starlight. They give her a hug and look like they might cry, and she thinks: yes, this is the greatest day of my life so far.

But then Fig’s trapped in the Nine Hells, and Ayda spends a sleepless week frantically researching Plane Shift. Just before she teleports to Arborly, she finds Garthy again, tells them what’s happened, and shows them her familiar. “My best friend Adaine taught me this spell,” she says. “I’ve named them Garthy and Adaine the Fish. I’ve got to go rescue Fig, but I wanted to tell you before I go, because it might be dangerous.”

“That’s a beautiful fish,” Garthy says, admiring. “Thank you, love, I’m honoured you named them after me. Now please, don’t let me delay you from rescuing your girlfriend.”

“I don’t know if Fig is my girlfriend yet,” Ayda says. “Adaine says it’s best if I clarify with her directly, so I must go to the Nine Hells at once.”

“That’s sensible,” Garthy says. “All right, darling, do be careful. I’ll see you.”

Carrying Garthy and Adaine the Fish, Ayda feels like she has Garthy’s steady strength with her, their serene celestial energy, and it makes her feel better, stronger, reassured and powerful, as she crosses planes to save her not-yet-girlfriend. Romance is another riddle she’s yet to solve, like her gender, but she loves riddles, and she has so many friends to help her now. The fun, as ever, lies in discovery, and she’s looking forward to the work as much as the answer.

* * *

Even in the Nine Hells, amidst all the hellfire, Fig is the brightest thing Ayda’s ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm always grateful for comments. <3 I'd love if you came to say hi to me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/) as well.


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